


to become invulnerable

by akc



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, M/M, Post-Time Skip, Post-War, Reminiscing, also i suppose enemies isn't really the right word, so much emotional repression in this thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:01:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22621426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akc/pseuds/akc
Summary: And then, like a great big apocalyptic meteor mercilessly smashing into the Earth and destroying everything in less than one second: “Let me read to you,” Dimitri says.Felix, of course, assumes that he didn’t hear that correctly.--Where Felix shares his memories of Dimitri directly to Dimitri, by moonlight, by candlelight, by sunlight.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 15
Kudos: 171
Collections: 2020 Dimilix Week





	to become invulnerable

**Author's Note:**

> written for dimilix week, "sunrise" prompt

_"Sad; so sad, those smoky-rose, smoky-mauve evenings of late autumn, sad enough to pierce the heart…anguish of the turn of the year, the time of impotent yearning, the inconsolable season."  
_ **Angela Carter, from** **_Saints & Strangers_ **

* * *

**dimitri's bedroom, 4:54 am, some years after the end of the war**

Felix will admit to himself that yes, Dimitri has a very lovely room.

It’s one of the perks, he supposes, that comes with being king. Even though he is certainly not the most affluent king, the nice and open room Dimitri lives in now is still a definite step up from the dormitory he had while he was a student and even _more_ of an improvement than the rubble that Felix has seen him sleep on more than once.

The room is perched three stories above the ground and has a large, spacious balcony. Felix likes to stand outside on it late at night and stare at the stars in a horrifically pensive fashion, as does Dimitri. Every now and then they do this together, except there is often wine involved because otherwise it wouldn’t be dramatic enough. 

Besides the balcony, though, the interior is nice as well. It has a hideously blue colored rug on the ground—one leftover from the dormitories, probably—and there’s plenty of space to pace back and forth. Sometimes Felix likes to make fun of how ridiculously huge the room is, and when he does, Dimitri always says _yes, I know,_ and kisses Felix on the forehead. 

The table off to the side has a box on it in which dozens of candles are shoved into. Sometimes a couple of the candles are lit; right now, three of them are, and much of the wax has begun to spill out onto the polished wood underneath them.

Felix supposes that there wasn’t really any need to light the candles. It’s sickening, almost, how romantic of a gesture they have came to be—but they provide light, and it isn’t good for Dimitri to be in the dark for too long, and so the candles stay and Felix cannot bring himself to complain. 

All of these things in Dimitri’s big noble room are nothing compared to the moonlight that spills through the window. Sunlight, too, sure—but Felix likes the moonlight more. Of course, he would never share any of this with any other person, but it’s at least nice to have his preferences sorted out in his head.

The moonlight stretches across the room right where Felix rests on the bed. It’s cold tonight—he’s already made fun of Dimitri for keeping his socks on—but not entirely unbearable. The candles illuminate the walls and the moon illuminates Dimitri, who lies beneath Felix, wearing that dumb smile he sometimes has on when his mind is clear.

Today was a good day.

“Thinking about something?” Dimitri asks, tapping Felix’s arm.

“Huh?” Felix gives a harsh blink. “No.”

“You were sentimentally staring at my shoulder.”

“No I wasn’t,” Felix says, rolling his eyes, even though he is aware that he _was_ probably sentimentally staring at Dimitri’s shoulder. 

Dimitri laughs, nice and smooth like honey. “If you say so.” He reaches up and carefully grips Felix’s arms and then pulls him down into a kiss. This is what they were originally doing before Felix got so irritated by their clothing that they had to pause and take almost everything off. So many buttons. So many buckles. It’s ridiculous. 

Now they’re less distracted, and it is a much better experience.

Felix buries his hand in Dimitri’s hair and tugs his head back. He kisses his neck and does not think about anything else for a moment, because sometimes it’s nice to do that. Sometimes—more than sometimes, in fact—it is good to simply think about _Dimitri_ and nothing else but _Dimitri._

If there is anything that war has taught Felix (besides to always prepare for things that are worse than the worst), it’s that there truly is never enough time to do anything. It was only a few months after the Blue Lions’ reunion that this realization dawned upon him. It had hit him suddenly—he was on his way to the training grounds one morning and the sky was awash with wonderful colors, unlike almost anything he had ever seen before. In that moment, Felix realized that he could not remember the last time he genuinely admired something. He could not remember the last time he felt anything other than frustration.

Felix blinks and sits up so that he can get a good look at Dimitri. To admire him.

He’s taken his eyepatch off. He does that more frequently now—in fact, he almost always removes it when it's just the two of them, which may seem like nothing remarkable, but for ages he was so ridiculously adamant about keeping it on at all times. He would mumble about how he was _unsightly_ and Felix would mumble back about how _it truly did not make any difference at all_ , and they would go back and forth for a few minutes until the eyepatch was either yanked off or the conversation was dropped altogether, leaving nothing but terse silence. 

_You should at least be able to be comfortable keeping it off around me,_ Felix remembers saying one night.

And, well—Felix knows that Dimitri was only being _Dimitri_ about the whole thing, but he’s glad that it isn’t an issue between the two of them anymore. Despite the scarring being too intense to allow the eyelid to open, it’s still nice to be able to look at him without it being covered up. It makes him look more like himself, perhaps.

“Are you sure you’re not thinking about something?” Dimitri asks, voice breathy. He’s still got that dopey-golden-retriever smile on his face.

“I’m not thinking about anything,” Felix assures him. “If nothing else, I would be thinking about you.”

“Me?” He tilts his head.

“You. You’re right in front of me, in case you didn’t know.” Felix cups Dimitri’s face with his hands, gentle enough to hold a feather. “You and your eye.”

“Ah—is now really such a good time to be thinking about my eye?” 

“It’s less your eye and more your eyepatch, actually.”

Dimitri’s nose does a little crinkling thing, as if he has been given off-putting news. “Shall I put it back on?”

 _Of course he’d say that,_ Felix thinks. “No, don’t do that.”

“Then why are you thinking about my eyepatch?” Clearly he isn’t going to be satisfied without some sort of answer, but it’s a bit embarrassing to admit to reminiscing about the past while he’s perched serenely in Dimitri’s lap, slightly sweaty and slightly hard.

“I was just. You know. I was thinking about how you used to keep it on all the time,” he says, settling for something more or less direct. 

“Oh. That is true.” Dimitri smiles, and it is like a star reaching its supernova phase—destructive and beautiful and unfathomable.

And just a little troublesome, but the same could be said of Felix. “I know. That’s what I just told you.” He pauses, splaying a calloused hand out across Dimitri’s chest, feeling his heartbeat against his palm. It’s good to know that it’s there. “Are we done talking about the eyepatch now?”

Dimitri looks embarrassed with himself. “I—yes, we are done talking about the eyepatch.” 

“Good,” Felix says, as if Dimitri is being tested. “Now stop being so distracted by everything.”

Fortunately, he does in fact stop being so distracted by everything.

* * *

It was a sunrise that made Felix realize how much time and energy he had been wasting the past several years trying to uphold his own shrill stubbornness. He could never admit to having such an epiphany thanks to the _sky,_ but there’s no denying that the sky was the catalyst for a series of several events that took place afterwards that were efforts done by Felix to rectify some of his relationships.

Namely, though, they were to rectify his relationship with Dimitri, as this was long overdue. Felix didn't want to waste any more time on that one.

Anyway—if one were to write a book on said events, they would probably be named thusly: The Eyepatch Incident, The Humiliating Revelation of Felix’s Likeness to Cats, and One of the Most Personally Embarrassing Set of Words Used in a Bedroom During a War Setting in Recorded History. There were several smaller, less significant events, but when Felix thinks back, these three ones in particular always stick out the most because there were all terrifying yet relieving, which are two emotions that don’t typically go together.

More than that, these three events also shared one common characteristic with each other, and that was that they all incorporated a sunrise of some sort.

Felix is not one to believe in fate or destiny or other stupid time-wasting things like that, but he never stops thinking about how bizarre it is that so much in his life seems to begin and end with a sunrise. And maybe that’s good—maybe it’s good that there are discernable patterns to meaningful things. Maybe it’s good, or maybe it’s bad. Felix doesn’t care enough to think deeply about the intricacies, but he’ll at least continuously acknowledge it.

After all—if he didn’t, nothing would have changed.

* * *

**i.  
** **the eyepatch incident**

The time is dawn.

Felix is walking up the stairs to the cathedral with two glasses of water in his hands. They’re for Dimitri, who should be staring blankly at a large pile of debris right about now. It has been just over three months since the rest of the Blue Lions reunited with one another, and Dimitri is as angry and hopeless and disoriented as ever. It seems like all he ever _does_ is stare at that damn debris pile, only moving if he’s going out to battle or if his legs get sick of being locked in one place.

There are many problems associated with this, but one of the main ones is that Felix rarely sees Dimitri drink any water nowadays. The absolute last thing they need is His Highness collapsing during a battle due to dehydration, which is why Felix is oh-so-kindly bringing him something to drink. He’s also curious to see what Dimitri is doing at this early hour—could he be sleeping? Does he sleep, ever? 

Felix would like to know.

He heads through the large iron doors and into the cathedral. Sunshine streams through the large hole in the ceiling, decorating half the cathedral in a shadow and the other half in light. There isn’t anybody in here yet, save for Dimitri, who sticks out like a sore thumb with his blue cape. It must be too early for everyone else.

Felix usually gets up pretty early. He is a sleep-early-wake-up-early type of guy, because he has found that this schedule works very well for him compared to any other ones. Sleep is generally a very important thing to Felix; if he doesn’t sleep enough, he’s even crabbier than usual, and what’s more is that it becomes harder to pay attention during training.

Unfortunately, this sleep schedule that Felix has adapted seems to do nothing to remedy the dark circles painted at the corners of his eyes. They’re due to stress, probably. This is what he likes to tell himself.

It’s one of the many things he has in common with Dimitri, those dark circles. Felix doesn’t want to accept the amount of similarities they share, because if he did, his entire core might start crumbling apart. He’s not ready for it. Who knows if he’ll _ever_ be ready for it.

As Felix approaches Dimitri from behind, he becomes acutely aware of the man’s hand, which seems to be plastered against his face, doing… something. Scratching his forehead, it looks like. The motion is human enough for Felix to want to stop what he’s doing, set the glasses on a nearby pew, and walk out of the cathedral without saying a thing. That sure would be nice. But he’s already walked all this distance, and so backing out would render the walking a waste of time.

And Felix has already had his time-wasting epiphany. He doesn’t need to exacerbate it.

The closer he gets to Dimitri, though, the less human his hand motion appears to be, and the more uneasy he starts to feel. Something is definitely funky, here, and Felix— 

—Felix thinks he knows what’s going on when he sees Dimitri’s stupid eyepatch laying on the ground.

He sets the cups of water down on the floor with about as much haste as a vacationing grain of salt. His movements are… slow. Uncertain. Preparatory. 

_Come on,_ Felix tells himself, frustrated. _Come on._

“Oi,” he then says, reaching out to Dimitri as if the man has eyes on the back of his head and can see the gesture. “What the hell are you doing?”

There is no response. Felix isn’t sure why it surprises him. “Hey, Boar,” he tries again, this time putting his hand on Dimitri’s shoulder and jostling him a bit. This seems to do the trick, because he suddenly whips around and snatches Felix’s wrist, grip like handcuffs that have been frozen in a block of ice.

Time has rendered both of them temporarily frozen. They do not abide by the laws of physics.

Felix figures that right now would not be a good time to resort to physical fighting. He uses his words instead, albeit very poorly. “I asked what the hell you’re doing. Are you going to answer?”

Dimitri still does not reply; his face contorts itself as far into a snarl as it can possibly go. Felix’s gaze wavers to his eyes—his damaged eye, specifically. It looks red. It looks painful. It looks like he’s been touching it.

“Are you trying to give yourself an eye infection?” he asks, thrashing his arm to try and shake Dimitri’s grip off.

“No,” Dimitri says, low and stoney. At least he’s finally said something.

Felix frowns. “I don’t believe you.”

“No,” Dimitri repeats, voice louder this time. It fills the cathedral like quicksand. “I’m not giving myself an eye infection. I _have_ an eye infection, and—”

“Wait.” Felix stops him from finishing his sentence, because _what?_ He takes a moment to pry Dimitri’s hand from his wrist and takes a step back, frown deepening. “What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you say something? Do you have no sense of self-preservation?”

“You’re asking stupid questions,” Dimitri says, hugging his arms close against his chest.

 _There’s no point to this,_ Felix thinks, solemn. _There’s no point to any of this._

He picks up the waters and hands one over, deciding to change the direction of the conversation for just a moment. “If you don’t drink this, I’ll kill you.”

“Trying to poison me?” Dimitri asks, smiling like he _wants_ that to happen. Felix feels sick.

“It’s water. You think I’m stupid enough to try and murder you in broad daylight?”

“I don’t know,” Dimitri replies, taking a sip of the water despite his attitude. “There’s nobody here right now. You could do it.”

“I’m not going to.”

“You could put me out of my misery.”

“Shut up,” Felix grits. His fingernails dig deeper into the palms of his hands with each passing second until it becomes almost unbearable. “I’m not talking about this. Tell me what the hell is happening to your eye. Tell me what you were doing to it a second ago.”

Dimitri points at his damaged eye. It looks beyond uncomfortable, which doesn't seem possible considering the circumstances. “It’s infected. I told you that. I was trying to fix it.”

“You’re kidding.”

No response. Felix considers a lobotomy, briefly. “Trying to fix it by tearing out the tissue around your socket? Sure.” Pause. “You’re being ridiculous. You’re being a pain in the ass to everyone, and I—”

This isn’t right. No, no, Felix is supposed to control his temper, he’s supposed to throw out less vulgarities, he’s supposed to be doing a _kind gesture_. And he is, technically, just with a lot of added aggression. 

He takes a deep breath. Meditators around the world would be jealous of it. _Fixing relationships. Not wasting time,_ he thinks. “You’re coming to the infirmary with me.”

“I want you to leave me alone,” Dimitri replies, simply. It’s his staple response when he’s sick of people talking to him—everyone in Garreg Mach knows this, because he’s said it to nearly every person that resides here save for the cats and the dogs and a few children. 

“You’re coming to the infirmary with me,” Felix says, voice as stable as it was the first time he spoke. “If you don’t cooperate then I will drag you there by your hair, so help me.”

Nothing changes, because nothing is capable of changing these days, and therefore Dimitri does not behave. “I want you to leave me alone.”

Felix has to ask himself why he is still here. Dimitri is clearly not interested; he clearly doesn’t care. Nothing beneficial will come from this interaction—they will both go their separate ways, Felix will glower at Dimitri for the better half of the afternoon, and then they will say nothing to each other for a few more weeks until they’re set out on another mission.

Time wasting. There’s too much of it. Dimitri is wasting time. Felix is wasting time. It isn’t going to wait for either of them, no matter who prays. It's hard to stay on task when a positive outcome doesn't feel like something capable of happening.

“If you do this _one, single, measly_ thing for me,” Felix starts, “then I will happily leave you alone. I will fuck off away from you for as long as you want, and you can continue to mope and make everyone stressed and angry and upset like you’ve been doing the past five years. If you come to the infirmary, I’ll do that. Can you manage it? Can you manage a selfless task?”

The words are like acid, pouring out of Felix’s mouth and into a messy pile on the ground. They corrode into the stone, they corrode into the dirt, they corrode into the Earth and seep into its core. The words travel back up into the sky and are spit back out as rain, and the cycle continues on forever. Felix does not think escape is possible.

He looks at Dimitri, deep into his face, pushing back his skin until his skull is metaphorically bared to the sun.

He does not blink.

“Fine,” Dimitri says. “Fine, Felix.”

The words are like winning the lottery. Felix is going to consider this a personal victory (particularly because he believes that Dimitri will consider this a personal loss). In fact, he’s going to tell Sylvain about it later, and Sylvain’s eyes will bulge out of his head and he will say _you did what?_ and Felix will simply respond with a smirk.

Maybe. 

Or maybe Felix won’t tell anybody. Maybe he will take Dimitri to the infirmary and then trudge back to his dorm and write a journal entry on this whole experience, then rip up said entry and burn it to nothing at the training grounds. That seems a bit more likely.

Only time will tell, he supposes. “Come on. You can have this other cup of water while we walk.”

Felix is surprised by his own use of the word _we,_ implying that this is a joint activity. It is, essentially, but that's not what it _feels_ like.

Dimitri goes back to saying nothing. He bends down and picks up his eyepatch, sets his empty cup down, makes a motion to put the eyepatch back on, and then— 

“No!” Felix shouts. The sound echoes through the cathedral walls; it makes him want to shove a piece of driftwood into his mouth. Where did that _come_ from?

For the shortest of moments, Dimitri’s face isn’t so tense. It’s as if the shout has brought back an old, pleasant memory of his—something aching, something he has yearned for. After what could be a millisecond at most, though, his expression returns back to what it was before, and the emptiness settles back into his expression. “What?”

“I—uh.” Felix struggles to remember the concept of linguistics. His brain is like a shattered flowerpot. “Keep the eyepatch… off.”

Dimitri stares at him. “Why.” 

Why indeed? Dimitri always asks such frustrating questions, especially ones that Felix does not know the answer to. To be fair, this _why_ was framed more as a statement rather than a question.

He’s going to have to make something up. Something reasonable. “Because you’re just going to have to take it off in a few minutes,” he says. 

This is apparently an acceptable answer, because Dimitri picks his empty cup back up and drops the eyepatch into it, which… is a little gross. But Felix isn’t going to say anything, because they might start arguing again. What is the point of all this, again? What is Felix attempting to do?

He knows, and yet he does not know. 

They walk out of the cathedral in silence save for the quiet _taps_ of their shoes, a soft sound of unison. _Together._ They walk _together._

Felix really needs to burn a journal entry.

As they make their way across the great long bridge, something dawns on Felix. It dawns on him just as he looks up at the pale pink-and-orange sky, barely touched by the sun this early in the morning.

He sneaks a glance at Dimitri. The reason he wanted him to keep the eyepatch off, he realizes, is because it makes him look more like a person without it on. He is himself again—he is Dimitri, young and excited, fighting with a wooden sword. He is not His Highness, overflowing with anguish, overflowing with torment, overflowing with nothing and yet everything.

Without the eyepatch, he is Dimitri.

Felix thinks that he misses him.

* * *

**ii.  
****the humiliating revelation of felix’s likeness to cats**

What a terrible sunrise today.

As far as Felix can tell, there is only a smear of color poking out from an otherwise abysmally grey sky: in the distance, there’s a gap in the clouds, and if one squints they might see a streak of peach through the gap. Everything else, though, is muted as far as the eye can see. 

It’s unfortunate, because Felix looks forward to sunrises now. He’s noticed that during wartime, it’s always the little things that have the most impact on a person. He knows, for example, that every evening Ashe eats the same set of four cookies from the dining hall. The cookies probably mean a lot to him, whether consciously or unconsciously. Felix doesn’t get it, but then again, who knows if Ashe would understand the whole sunrise-pattern nonsense either.

 _Maybe_ , Felix thinks, _a sunrise is a nice reminder that even though half the continent feels as though it is sinking into the ground, there are still things that carry on normally._ Birds still sing. The sun still rises. Ashe still eats his cookies. The cycle continues. Meaningless things can be ascribed meaning, and yet their inherent meaninglessness lives on. 

This is too much thought before noon. Felix blinks, inhales, and thinks about training instead. That’s typically a safe topic.

And speaking of training—he’s already five minutes behind schedule. 

Felix makes his way out of the dining hall, deciding to take the longer route by the greenhouse. He’s always curious as to who’s in there, because every now and then he’ll catch somebody talking to the plants. _Talking to the plants!_ They cannot even respond.

A cat walks past him. “Hello,” Felix says, glancing around beforehand to make sure nobody is listening. The cat does not respond, and Felix continues walking.

In retrospect, taking the longer route was a decidedly stupid idea, mainly because the clouds in the sky appear to be growing darker with each passing picosecond. By the time Felix is halfway to the training grounds, it has begun to rain, and he doesn’t have anything to shield himself with.

Well, fine. Nothing wrong with a little rain. Nothing wrong with a little rain, that is, until it turns into an outright downpour in the same amount of time it takes Felix to blink three times. _Blink, blink, blink. Downpour._

This is now terrible. He takes cover by the professor’s dorm room, glowering while standing underneath the covering. Drops of water fall from his hair and onto the floor, mocking him. Each dripping sound is like a pin going into his forehead.

Felix supposes that he’s just going to have to sit around and wait until the rain lets up. He’s not sure how long that’ll be; if he has to, he can sneak back to his dorm and wait around until the sky clears up. The truly agonizing part about this, though, is how _close_ he is to the training grounds. If he were to run, he could— 

“Felix,” a voice says, interrupting him. The voice is fond. The voice is so, so fond that it hurts, like pressing on a bruise. 

Felix spins around; Dimitri stands before him holding a few books in his hands. The spines are all faded away—they must be very old. Felix itches to know what the titles are.

“Boar,” he sneers, immediately wishing he used a different word.

The sentiment seems to be shared between the two of them. “Ah, won’t you call me by my actual name?” Dimitri asks, raising an eyebrow as if he’s confused by a lecture note. Terrible, terrible. He’s so inquisitive and soft now, nothing like the empty-eyed Dimitri with a mutated heart that existed mere months ago.

Felix would never say it aloud, but he’s glad that Dimitri has gotten better. Looking at him in that state—that half-dead state—was like sticking a hand into a pit of venomous snakes, frightening and sickening in more ways than one. He was suffering, so clearly suffering. And it was endless.

Felix did not like watching an old friend drown in a bottomless vat of tar.

“I don’t know,” he replies, because he truly does not know. “What are you doing?”

“I could ask you the same thing. You are the one completely soaked, while I am dry.”

“Considering how hard it’s raining right now, I think that _you’re_ the one who’s out of place,” Felix mumbles.

“Hmm.” Dimitri looks at his books, and then resumes eye contact. “I suppose that’s true. Very well. Professor—er, Byleth—er, the professor lets me borrow their books sometimes, so I was just picking a few up.”

Felix’s eyebrows shoot up onto his forehead and out into the stratosphere. “They let you into their room?” 

“Yes. It is not like I have a key, that would be too personal for me. They leave the door unlocked during breakfast.”

Felix wouldn’t have guessed that the professor ate breakfast so early. “And how do you know that they leave it unlocked?”

“Because we have discussed it beforehand. Why are you interrogating me? Do you not think that you owe me an answer as to why you’re all wet?” Dimitri smiles, invisible solar flares bouncing off his face. _He knows exactly what he’s doing._

“I was—going to train,” Felix says, feeling just a little bit stupid. “And it started raining. I’m waiting for it to stop.” Pause. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Dimitri laughs, then, and it’s a somewhat misplaced thing. The two of them are clearly not very socially adept, particularly when it comes to talking to one another, which is why unplanned conversation like this proves to occasionally be... a challenge. “Would you rather I not look at you?”

“That’s not what I was—honestly, talking to you is the same thing as talking to an cricket.” Felix folds his arms across his chest, unsatisfied with his analogy. He’s also still on the whole borrowing-books-directly-from-the-professor’s-room thing, but that will have to be a conversation for later, because Dimitri is clearly uninterested in elaborating.

“I apologize if that’s the case.” Another smile. _Ah!_ Something in Felix’s stomach is starting to tangle. “Are you—”

 _No, no,_ Felix thinks, _he is not going to get to ask me_ another _question._

“Are you planning on going home anytime soon?” Felix interrupts, making eye contact simply to punctuate his point. 

“As you’ve pointed out, it’s raining,” Dimitri explains. His tone is that of vanilla ice cream; he speaks like he’s explaining the concept of rain to a three month old infant. “So I am going to wait it out here, if you don’t mind.”

If Felix were to grit his teeth together any harder than he is right now, they would surely shatter inside of his mouth. That would be an issue, and it’s rather disgusting to think about, so he eases up his jaw and takes a deep breath. He needs a therapy session to decipher why Dimitri’s kindness is such an agitating thing. Why does he have such a hard time accepting it?

Felix knows that Dimitri is doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary right now, and yet for whatever reason, it’s making his blood pressure rise at an alarming rate. The problem does not lie within Dimitri himself—Felix knows that this is his own bizarre internal issue. He just doesn’t understand it. He has never understood it. 

Maybe Felix doesn’t like the sun that starts bursting underneath his sternum when Dimitri smiles. Maybe he doesn’t like the way that he feels when Dimitri compliments his fighting abilities—maybe the warm, fuzzy sensation that washes over him when that happens is too unfamiliar, too overwhelming. Or maybe Felix doesn’t know what to do with the fact that he thinks he might pass out every time Dimitri looks at him on the battlefield, face sweaty and hair a mess, impressive body on display for whomever happens to glance at him. Or maybe— 

Dimitri speaks again. “Felix?”

Felix, of course, nearly jumps out of his skin. “What?” he hisses, trying to compose himself from… whatever it was his brain was just thinking about.

“Oh, nothing. Have I ever told you how much you behave like a cat?”

The hilarity of this exchange is stifling. “Can’t say that you have,” Felix mutters, strained.

“Well, it is true. You do.”

 _Stifling._ “Care to explain why?”

Dimitri opens his mouth to speak and then promptly shuts it. All of the sudden, something happens to his face—his eyebrows stretch upwards and he appears to be holding back another one of his smiles. That’s probably a good thing, because Felix thinks that he’s going to drop dead any moment now. “I can explain it, but only if you come back with me to my room so that I can put these books away.”

He’s—what was that request? What was it? Felix’s cochleas have stopped functioning. Or perhaps it’s his brain that’s not functioning anymore; who knows. At this point, he feels humiliated in at least nine different ways, so it’s hard to tell. “What?”

“You can dry off that way,” Dimitri says. “I would hate to leave you here… alone.”

 _Alone._ The word is like stepping on glass.

“Fine,” Felix says, wanting to prove that he doesn’t want to be left _alone_ either. And he doesn’t—well, he does, but he doesn’t at the same time—so it’s fine, really. He glances up at the sky; the rain is still falling down harshly as ever. It’s disappointing, because Felix didn’t get to see the sunrise today.

He stops and looks at Dimitri. Dimitri, with his sunny hair and sunny smile, two things that Felix cannot ever seem to get out of his mind. It’s frightening to accept this offer, almost—every additional second he spends with Dimitri is another step closer to having to face some deeper _emotions_ and _feelings._ And while Felix is certainly not emotionless, he’s tried very hard to swear off anything bothersome save for anger. 

Dimitri, with his sunny hair and sunny smile. He is like an eclipse.

“Fine?” Dimitri asks, tilting his head.

Felix nods, because there is nothing else he can do. He misses the sunrise. “I’ll come with you.”

* * *

The walk to Dimitri’s dorm is silent, save for the part where they have to quickly run through the rain to get to the staircase that leads to the second floor. Their shoes carry watery footprints all the way up the staircase and down the hall.

Felix does not look at Dimitri and his wet hair and wet lips while they walk. He does not look. He does not look. He cannot look. 

He is very stressed.

Dimitri opens up the door to his room in what _must_ be exaggerated slowness, because Felix finds himself staring extra hard at the way that his wrist turns while he does so. _This is awful,_ he thinks to himself. _This is so awful._

Anybody else would be thrilled to be in this position. Getting to see the inside of His Highness’ dorm room? What a treat. Sylvain would be waggling his finger at Felix right now, and Felix would have to resist the urge to bite his entire hand off.

“I apologize for the mess,” Dimitri says as they step inside. He shuts the door behind himself while Felix looks around, trying to locate whatever the “mess” is supposed to be but not finding it.

Dimitri sets the books down on one of his shelves and goes into the corner to search for something. Felix can’t tell what he’s doing; he’s making it a point to not pay attention, because this is a lot right now. And he isn’t sure whether he’s very sweaty or if it’s just rainwater still somehow collecting on his forehead, but whatever it is, it’s not helping how he feels.

Felix picks up one of the books. It’s some boring history thing. He sets it back down.

“Here.” Dimitri comes back over while holding something fuzzy in his arms. _A towel._ That’s what it’s called. “You should dry off.”

“I don’t need you to fuss over me,” Felix immediately retorts for nearly no reason. He’s having quite a hard time being amicable today.

“I am not fussing over you. I am offering you a towel, because you are wet, and that is a relatively normal thing to do.” Pause. “Please take the towel. You look silly.”

The adjective _silly_ is enough for Felix to snatch the towel from Dimitri’s hands and start drying off. 

“There you go,” Dimitri says, tender, and the words make Felix burn an incomprehensible shade of red. His stomach is doing more strange twisting things, particularly because he is becoming more and more aware of how intently Dimitri is staring at him as he wipes himself down with a towel.

_Think of something to say. Anything. Think of anything. Anything to make him stop staring, anything to get his attention focused on something else, because this is—_

A lightbulb explodes over Felix’s head. “Is that really the type of stuff you enjoy reading?” he asks, gesturing to the newly acquired books.

At the question, something akin to shock flashes across Dimitri’s face. It is only there for a moment. “Hmm. Not all the time, no. I would not say that I am a picky reader in any regard, so I tend to simply pick up whatever is there.”

“I never saw you reading much during the academy days.”

“I read in my room,” Dimitri explains, spreading his arms out slightly before dropping them back to his sides. “And I did not read as often as I do now. I was distracted by… other things.”

Other things. Felix closes his eyes and pretends that he didn’t hear this.

Dimitri continues. “Why do you ask?” 

“Just curious,” Felix says, vaguely. He’s finished drying off, but it’s still raining, and now it’s later into the morning and the day is not going as planned at all. And unfortunately, there are only so many things they can awkwardly talk about five feet apart from one another. “I don’t read a lot.”

“Why not?”

Felix isn’t sure why he shared that piece of information. “It’s not my thing,” he says, still vague. He holds out the towel. “I don’t know where you want me to put this.”

The way Dimitri handles the towel is like he is trying to separate an egg white from the egg yolk. He folds it and sets it in a bin filled with clothing articles, which is a little strange, considering how Felix rarely sees Dimitri sporting anything casual. “Better?”

“Yeah,” Felix mumbles, biting the inside of his cheek as hard as his brain allows him to. 

“It is still raining,” Dimitri says, looking out the window. He sighs. “This is taking longer than I assumed it would to clear up. I hope it isn’t awkward that I’ve brought you here…” His voice trails off at the end, as if falling into a deep thought.

Felix scratches the back of his head. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

There is a long moment of silence while Dimitri continues to think. When he’s apparently finished, he steps past Felix and picks up one of the books from his shelf.

And then, like a great big apocalyptic meteor mercilessly smashing into the Earth and destroying everything in less than one second: “Let me read to you,” he says.

Felix, of course, assumes that he didn’t hear that correctly. “What?”

“I said, let me read to you.” Dimitri blinks once, twice, enunciating his words perfectly. The message is clear. Felix has been hit by the meteor. He is hypothetically collapsing. 

“Uh,” he manages, eloquent. “Why.”

“You said that you don’t read much. It is still raining. Um… there is not much else to do.”

Spoken like a true king. Then again—what else can Felix _do_ in this scenario? Storm out of the room and hole up in his dorm and try to have a conversation with the wall? Up the ante of patheticness?

He thinks about the sunrise.

“Whatever,” he grumbles, which is just about as close to _yes_ as he’s going to get. 

Dimitri’s face breaks out into a grin. “Oh, really?” He clutches the book close to his chest, clearly bewildered by Felix’s response. “I was assuming that you would not accept my offer.”

“Don’t assume things about me,” Felix replies, ever the hypocrite. 

“I will never do it ever again,” Dimitri says, removing some of the heavier pieces of armor that he’s wearing before taking a seat on his bed. He pats the space next to him. 

Felix is a dead fish, floating on the surface of the water. Nevertheless, he takes a seat, because apparently he doesn’t have control over his body at the moment. He is completely nonautonomous, at least for the time being. 

And, well. He isn’t sure what specifically happens after this. All he knows is that when Dimitri reads, he has the voice of something close to a saint. Sitting so close to him like this is causing Felix’s little _emotions problem_ to start boiling in his brain, threatening to spill out of his metaphorical-teapot skull.

The rain slows down after a while. It’s just Dimitri’s voice, the book, and the sound of birds outside. _The sunrise,_ Felix thinks drearily. _The sunrise._

At some point, once his eyes have closed and he has somehow migrated to a supine position, Felix can fuzzily remember the sensation of Dimitri’s hand in his hair, petting him ever so gently. This doesn’t seem at all like something capable of happening—but it is. It is, and Felix has to deal with it. 

He does not know when he fell asleep.

He does know when he wakes up, though. It’s just past noon—the church bells ring to signify the time, and it jolts Felix awake. 

“Fuck,” he whispers, smoothing his hand over Dimitri’s bedsheets. Dimitri himself appears to have left, and Felix isn’t sure whether or not that makes this better or worse. He settles on better, because at least he can face him later on. At least he won’t have to deal with him saying, _ah, you had fallen asleep,_ in that gentle honey voice of his. 

_Think on the bright side!_ Sylvain would say. 

Felix doesn’t know if he can, because in this case, Dimitri is the bright side.

He slowly rises from the bed and leaves the room, stopping by his own dorm to relax for a moment. Felix realizes, suddenly, that Dimitri never explained why he is like a cat.

Admittedly, he thinks that he can figure that one out on his own now.

* * *

**iii.  
** **one of the most personally embarrassing set of words used in a bedroom during a war setting in recorded history**

One afternoon, the Blue Lions go to battle in a small village. There are women and children there. They are screaming and crying, and Dimitri has a terrible look on his face the entire time. It reads _danger._ It reads _caution._ He does not make eye contact with anyone.

The battle lasts all night. It rains for a while. Felix recalls being slightly frustrated over the fact that his shoes got muddy. He was looking for anything to be frustrated over, he remembers—anything other than what was going on in front of him. Usually he doesn’t have a problem with battles, even if there are people screaming and crying and begging him for help from underneath debris and next to fires. Usually. 

But something about Dimitri’s face made him want to be anywhere than where he was. It was so distant, so empty. So pained, as if he were moments away from giving up and sticking his spear through his own chest.

 _You could put me out of my misery,_ Dimitri had once said to him in the cathedral when Felix was bringing him water. How often does he feel like that now? How many hours does he spend thinking that way, even now?

Felix does not want to know. 

The battle ends in the morning. Smoke billows into the air, leftover from the wreckage, blanketing the sky and darkening the sunrise. Felix can still see the peaches and yellows and pinks but they’ve been greyed—dulled—into something miserable, something that isn’t really a sunrise at all. 

“You okay?” someone asks Felix as he stares up at the smoky clouds. The someone is Sylvain; he sounds tired, like he would do anything to lie down for a mere 30 seconds, which is unfortunate considering how far they have to walk to get back to Garreg Mach. They’re technically lucky that it isn’t going to take them more than a few hours.

“I'm fine,” Felix says. It’s a lie and he knows it, and so does Sylvain, but neither of them are going to acknowledge it. Denial is much safer for these sorts of things.

“Okay.” Pause. Sylvain rubs his arm, awkward. “We’re getting ready to leave soon, just so you know.”

Felix does a sort of head-nod-thing, and Sylvain must have taken this as his cue to leave, because he steps away without saying another word.

It was unmistakably a terrible battle, a mental pyrrhic victory. Felix really took a beating—and although the healing magic fixed up most of his bruises and gashes, his body has been left unbearably sore and lethargic. A side effect of using too much healing magic, Felix has come to discover, is that it leaves your limbs feeling like they are composed entirely of lint.

Today will be long.

Felix glances at Dimitri, who is still staring at nothing. His hair covers up his eyes; it reminds Felix that he should pester Dimitri about getting a haircut. Maybe he can do that later tonight, as a distraction.

Felix isn’t sure when he started becoming so overly concerned about things like this—he is constantly trying to decipher Dimitri’s mood, constantly trying to make sure he’s not about to break, constantly trying to provide distractions. And no longer are their interactions strained in the way that they were before—they are strained for an entirely different reason now. There is less anger and more looking.

They are always looking. 

“We’re leaving soon,” Felix tells Dimitri, moving in his direction. This is more or less of a test to see whether he will respond.

Dimitri stops staring at his nothingness and tilts his head to Felix. His eye is bright red. “Good,” he says, voice broken in a way that could never, never be poetic. “I’ll be ready.”

There is nothing else Felix can say to him right now. There are no gestures that will help; only the passage of time will allow Dimitri to clear his mind. The best that can be done is to keep an eye on him, but everybody is always doing that, even when it seems like they aren’t. 

Felix sighs. It’s a sigh for himself, not anybody else. 

Somewhere in the distance, Mercedes gives a verbal signal that it’s time to leave, and Felix could not be happier. 

* * *

The trip back is silent. It is silent, and Felix only remembers bits and pieces, because by the time they get back to the monastery, his brain is so deprived of energy and sleep that he can barely piece together one coherent thought. 

They eat some sort of meal, Felix thinks. He doesn’t have much of it because he’s too dizzy from all the walking and fighting and forcing himself to stay awake via asking Sylvain to punch his arm every half hour. Whatever it is that they eat, though, it smells like something only available to people after they die. 

Dimitri is nowhere in sight during dinner. Felix figures that he is in the cathedral.

As much as his brain is metaphorically on the ground, writhing and begging for sleep, the last modicum of goodness living within Felix’s heart drags him all the way across the bridge and up the stairs to the cathedral. He blinks and suddenly, suddenly, he is surrounded by pews. 

Dimitri sits in the front row, looking at his legs. At least he’s sitting down.

Felix hobbles over to him, doesn’t sit down. Not yet. “Dimitri,” he says, blunt. _Boar_ is like a lost word nowadays, it seems.

“Felix,” Dimitri replies, voice tight. It’s clear that he’s having a hard time staying in reality.

“Just wanted to make sure you didn’t run away or something.” Felix winces at his own words. He hadn’t meant to say that. “You weren’t at dinner. I was—everyone was worried about you.”

“Were they,” Dimitri says, bland. Felix’s face warps into a frown.

“Yeah. You can’t just—”

For once, Dimitri interrupts him: “What can I not do, Felix? What are you going to tell me?”

“—you can’t just fuck off like that, after something happens that clearly affects you. It makes everybody antsy.” _It makes me worried._

“I would just like to be alone.”

“Yeah, well, a little notice would be greatly appreciated.”

“I’m having a hard time,” Dimitri says. 

“We’re all having a hard time,” Felix grits, mouth hard like amber. He can feel himself starting to lose his temper and it’s _frustrating._ All of his teeth hurt; conversations like this are getting one’s gums poked at. 

And it doesn’t help that despite his proclamations of wanting to be alone, Dimitri’s voice is still so _understanding_ and _patient_. “I am aware.”

This is—this is all so stupid, Felix realizes. Living is such a stupid and arduous and never-ending task that it makes him sick to think about sometimes. There’s so much bullshit to put up with, so much pain to observe, so much agony to be put through. 

Felix sits next to Dimitri on the pew. Their thighs touch. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, regretful. “I get nastier when I’m sleep deprived.”

“That is a relatively normal thing to happen. I do not blame you.”

 _You should blame me,_ Felix doesn’t say. _You should be mad at me._ “How thoughtful.”

Dimitri doesn’t say anything, he merely hums in response. The air is left silent after this little exchange—for better or for worse, they don’t have anything else to say to one another. 

There have been battles before like the one they fought in earlier, ones that would be depicted as extreme tragedies in novels and poetry. There have been plenty of battles like that. If he wanted to, Felix thinks that he could draft an entire book on all of those types of battles that he has been in, complete with gut-wrenching details and artist interpretations as well. He isn’t going to do that, obviously, because he is more morally sound than that and also because he isn’t very good at writing. This is primarily due to the fact that writing incorporates lots of _feelings._

Perhaps it is better to say, then, that Felix is not good at _feeling,_ even though every now and then he likes to convince himself that he is.

Well, anyway. The point is that this is not the first battle that has left everyone feeling completely and utterly washed out. They do this at least once a month, if not more, it feels like. And there isn’t anything that anybody can do about it—there is no running away. There is no hiding. There can’t be, because it never stops. War is endless. Not just physically, but emotionally, too. 

“We should go back,” Felix eventually says. He pauses, surprised by his use of the word _we._ “And get some sleep.”

“You are probably right,” Dimitri mumbles, standing up slowly. “Would you like to walk with me?”

It isn’t like Felix can just say _no_ (except he can) _,_ so he nods and joins Dimitri. Time moves irregularly as they head to their dorms; it seems like it is hours before they are finally standing in front of Dimitri’s door, and yet in less than a microsecond Felix feels himself being pulled into the room by his wrist. 

He hasn’t slept in so long. 

“Why am I in here?” Felix asks, staring at Dimitri’s bed. Memories of being read to are flooding back and he doesn’t know what to do with them besides ruminate.

“I offered to walk home with you, and you accepted,” Dimitri says, as if this is a perfectly acceptable answer despite the fact that it doesn’t answer Felix’s question even in the slightest.

“Why am I,” he gestures at the ground, “in your room specifically.”

This doesn’t seem like a question Felix should be asking Dimitri, it feels like a question he should be asking himself. For months now he has been agonizing over _emotions_ and quite frankly, ignoring them has not made them go away. Felix had assumed that if he ignores the way he feels when Dimitri puts a hand on his shoulder or smiles at him that it would go away. That’s how things usually work—pretend a problem doesn’t exist, and it will oftentimes genuinely stop being an issue.

This, though. This is different. Because Felix cannot ignore how he feels, as Dimitri is around him _all the time._

Awful. Awful, horrible, terrible. Every night Felix lays down and imagines Dimitri running his fingers through his hair, and every morning he imagines waking up next to him. It never happens.

It never happens. Felix wonders is he is insane.

“I do not know,” Dimitri says, pulling Felix out of his thoughts like a fish hook. “I blinked and we were here. You don’t have to stay, you know.”

“Yeah,” Felix whispers. “I know.”

Silence, like thorns. Dimitri is the rose.

There is a time and place for everything. Perhaps right now—in this dilapidated, half-awake half-asleep state—is the time for… something. Perhaps this is the ideal moment, the one that has been crawling up from the soil for _ages._

“Dimitri,” Felix says.

“Felix,” Dimitri says.

And, ah. Felix is not in charge of his vocal cords, somebody else is, and for that, he is glad. “I think that I love you.”

“Oh,” Dimitri breathes. It’s as if the wind has been knocked out of him. The atmosphere shifts.

According to Felix, it is suddenly time to leave now, though, so he turns around and reaches for the doorknob. What else can he say? What else can he do, now that he has invariably ruined whatever goodness he had built in his relationship with Dimitri? There is nothing else to do but leave, and go to bed, and continue on with life as usual. 

“No—where are you going?” Dimitri’s hand is suddenly on Felix’s shoulder; his grip is gentle. “You cannot seriously think I would let you leave without discussing this.”

“There isn’t anything to discuss. I should sleep. Tomorrow is—”

“You have to face a person when you speak to them.”

Felix’s face contorts itself like he has taken a very large and obscene bite out of a lemon, but he turns around nonetheless, because he doesn’t have much left to lose. Whatever it is that Dimitri has to say can surely wait until the morning.

Except—apparently Dimitri has nothing to say at all. The hand that was on Felix’s shoulder slides up to cradle his cheek, and his other free hand comes up to rest on Felix’s hip, fingertips just barely ghosting against his clothes. It’s clear that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, it’s clear that he’s thoroughly flustered, and Felix finds great pleasure in this. He situates his hands against Dimitri and figures that he might as well help him along.

Their lips touch. Felix can see the sunrise bursting underneath his eyelids, among other gross romantic things.

Dimitri moves back slightly. “Oh, Felix,” he whispers, voice like church bells, “I have dreamed of this moment. Am I asleep right now? You must be honest.”

This nearly gets a snort out of Felix, but then he realizes that the question isn’t as ludicrous as it originally sounds. He pinches Dimitri on the arm. “You’re awake.”

“Thank goddess.” He laughs, breathy and hitched. “You will have to forgive my inexperience. Can we kiss again? That was—”

“You’re making this bad,” Felix says, because it’s true. He considers elaborating, but then decides against it and presses their mouths together again. It lasts longer this time, and at some point they stumble to Dimitri’s bed and sit down. It’s a little awkward, considering they’re both still wearing so much armor, but apparently this isn’t enough to stop them from deepening the kiss. They become desperate, almost; Felix relishes in the way that Dimitri chases after him for more, for more, for more.

Eventually, the armor _does_ get in the way. Felix taps his finger on Dimitri’s arm. “This is uncomfortable. I’ve had enough.”

Dimitri seems to get the message, because he stands and almost immediately starts undressing. For just a moment, Felix has absolutely no idea where this is going—he’s so very tired, he doesn’t know if he can go any further than what they’re doing—but then Dimitri pulls out some nightclothes and tosses them his way and he sighs. _Of course,_ Felix thinks. _Offering me his clothes._ Who knows if it'll even fit him.

They change. The light is switched off. Felix is sleeping in here tonight, apparently, and that’s fine. He isn’t sure how he’s going to handle this tomorrow morning, but that’s not something to think about right now.

Dimitri is nestled against him. Felix feels very small and very short, but his ego stays intact and sleep takes over everything else on his mind.

He does not remember his dreams, and wakes up at dawn.

* * *

**dimitri's bedroom, 6:43 am, some years after the end of the war**

Felix is combing his fingers through Dimitri’s hair because he is telling him a series of stories. He’s noticed that Dimitri tends to like when he does this—when he goes over some of their memories together, good and bad and ugly ones, while giving him some sort of physical affection. Maybe he likes to be reminded of his memories, because Felix knows that he gets things out of order sometimes. They joke about it; they call Dimitri an old man.

In reality, he isn’t very old at all, just tired. He’s been put through too much, but his brain and heart have softened substantially in the past few years since true peace broke out across Faerghus. Things are certainly better in that sense.

“I remember,” Dimitri says, eyes closed, smile on his lips. “You looked so panicked the next morning when we woke up. I was worried that you were going to take back what you had said.”

“That would have been a waste of time. A waste of my time. Yours too."

Felix rolls onto his back. He’s been laying on Dimitri’s bare chest for a while now while he shared those stories, but his neck is starting to hurt and he needs a break. His eyes focus on the ceiling—it’s been painted in the past year, now adorned with dozens upon dozens of people and animals and flowers and trees. Millions of colors on Dimitri’s ceiling in his lovely, elegant room.

“Are you sick of laying with me?” Dimitri asks. His tone is that of a jest. He’s gotten better at joking about things, finally.

Felix picks up one of the pillows they’ve tossed aside and _whomps_ Dimitri with it. “No, I’m not sick of you.” _You make me miserably happy,_ he doesn’t say. “My neck started to hurt because your body is carved from a rock.”

Dimitri sits up a bit and looks down at Felix, smiling so, so dumbly. It’s a horrifically infectious smile, one that spreads and spreads and spreads at a rate faster than the speed of light. “I apologize,” he says, reaching a hand out to cup Felix’s cheek before he leans down and gives him a kiss. His apology is completely insincere—it’s more of a filler phrase now. Felix likes it that way; he used to apologize way too much.

It’s interesting how things change, for better and for worse. Felix has become less of a recluse, and he smiles and talks more now, and he is perhaps somewhat kinder, at least in the sense that he is more aware of the meanings behind his words. And Dimitri—he is less sad these days, he does not always carry a facial expression that makes him look like his limbs are being corroded away. There’s still some emptiness in him—it will probably always be there—but only some. When Felix looks at him, he does not see emptiness, he sees the world. Terribly cheesy.

“Apology accepted,” Felix mumbles, face going an embarrassing bright red. 

He sighs quietly. They stayed up so late—way too late for people who are in their late twenties. _This isn’t responsible,_ a younger Dimitri with furrowed brows would chastise. 

It’s nice to stay up late every now and then. There’s plenty to do—plenty to talk about, plenty to reminisce, plenty of books to look at, and plenty of ways for them to touch one another. Sometimes Dimitri simply needs a handful of distractions to pull him out from a daze, and sometimes Felix simply needs a break from all the paperwork he goes through every day. 

“Is the sun coming up?” he whispers, like it’s a secret.

Dimitri tilts his head the other direction, briefly. “Looks like it’s just about to.” Pause. He turns his attention back to Felix. “It’s a little strange, don’t you think?”

“What’s strange?”

“You, telling me all these stories about sunrises and whatnot, and afterwards we sit through an actual sunrise.”

“I don’t think it’s strange,” Felix says, guiding Dimitri to lie back down. He wiggles closer to him, leans his head against his shoulder. “If you were more observant you would realize that I did it on purpose.”

“Ah, had the whole night planned out, then?”

“I like to try and plan them out a little bit.” He fiddles with a loose string from the bedsheets. “You can’t honestly think that I talk out of my ass all night long.”

“No, no, I wasn’t implying that. It’s impressive, truthfully. You always… know the right thing to say.”

 _It’s because I care about you more than I care about myself,_ Felix doesn’t say, because it’s too deep and poignant and revealing, even for the man he’s turned out to be today. Instead, he laughs a little. “If you say so.”

“No, it is true. You’re so honest, often to a fault, but it makes you—”

“Dimitri,” Felix says, linking their hands together, “stop talking and pretend to enjoy the sunrise with me.”

Dimitri stops talking. 

The two of them look out the window at the sunrise, and the sunrise looks back at them. 

* * *

_"The main thing, when a sword cuts into one’s soul, is to keep a calm gaze, lose no blood, accept the coldness of the sword with the coldness of a stone. By means of the stab, after the stab, become invulnerable."  
_ **Franz Kafka, from a diary entry, featured in _The Blue Octavo Notebooks_**

**Author's Note:**

> (hits my brain) this bad boy can fit so much dimilix into it
> 
> thank you for reading! felix pov hard so i appreciate everyone that reads!
> 
> you can find me on twitter [here.](https://twitter.com/bloomedvillain)


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